The Improbable Humility Of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

As The Biggest Show On Earth Enters Its Final Season, The Game Of Thrones Star Discusses Goodbyes, Redemption And That Weird Motion Effect On Your HDTV.

- Rich Monahan

NIKOLAJ COSTER-WALDAU

Sits In The Lobby Of A Quaint Suburban Movie Theatre, But His Mind Is Elsewhere.

It’s A Draughty, Worn-In Cinema House That Opened In The Mid-20th Century And Seems To Have Been Barely Renovated Since, Though The Overall Effect Feels Less Like Neglect Than The Loving Wear And Tear Of Generations Of Use, Like A Favourite Couch. Today, In The Theatre’s Off-Hours, The Lobby Doubles As The Staging Area For A Photo Shoot, And Amid The Wardrobe Racks And Old Carpeting Is Coster-Waldau: Camera-Ready In A Sharp Black Suit, With The Kind Of Good Looks That Seem At Once Both Familiar And Impossible. He Silently Leans Forward In A Folding Chair, Brow-Furrowed, Deep In Concentration. Perhaps He’S Mulling Over The Finality Of Game Of Thrones Or The Transitional Moment He Now Finds Himself In. Or The Path Towards His Second Emmy Nomination. Or…

“What’s the name of the town where the friends from Dawson’s Creek grew up?”

He reads aloud the multiple choice options from his phone. “Cape Canaveral, Capeside, Cape Cod, Cape Town.”

“Capeside,” his baby-faced PR rep offers.

Another moment of silence.

“How would you get that? You look so much younger.”

Such is spending time with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. For an international leading man who stands at 1.88m and is built like a footballer, his presence is casually disarming: Well, since we’re all here, let’s have a nice time, yeah? He’ll share his smartphone trivia game with you. He’ll even troubleshoot your home entertainment set-up. “When you get them, they’re already preprogrammed,” he advises the shoot’s stylist, railing against motion smoothing, a default TV manufacturer setting. “You need to turn it off. It’s primed for fast-moving sports.”